Questions For Tony Snow And A Revelation.

Media Matters

Media Matters has some questions for new White House Press Secretary Tony Snow. The list:

1.) Has Homeland Security Secretary Chertoff changed his view that "there's a smarter way" to handle illegal immigration than sending the National Guard to the southern border, which he has called "a horribly over-expensive and very difficult way to manage this problem"? Or, in making the proposal for enhanced border security, did President Bush simply ignore the views of his Homeland Security secretary?

What's this, you ask? Well, this is something pointed out by TPMmuckraker yesterday morning and expanded upon by Media Matters.

As the weblog TPM Muckraker noted in a May 16 entry (crediting Congressional Quarterly's Patrick Yoest), on the December 15, 2005, edition of Fox News's The O'Reilly Factor, host Bill O'Reilly asked Chertoff "Why don't you put the National Guard on the border to back up the Border Patrol?" to which Chertoff responded:

CHERTOFF: Well, the National Guard is really, first of all, not trained for that mission. I mean, the fact of the matter is the border is a special place. There are special challenges that are faced there.

[...]

CHERTOFF: But to really deploy across the border, you'd have to deploy an enormous number of people. You'd have to supply them at the border, and you'd have to give them the kind of training to deal with people who are crossing the border. You don't necessarily want to put --

O'REILLY: You don't think you can do that? I think the Guard could do that.

CHERTOFF: I think it would be a horribly over-expensive and very difficult way to manage this problem.

O'REILLY: But it's something.

CHERTOFF: I think there's a smarter way to do it. Well, it -- unless you would be prepared to leave those people in the National Guard day and night for month after month after month, you would eventually have to come to grips with the challenge in a more comprehensive way.

Funny, huh? Anyway, onto the other question.

2.) Has the President explained how his plan to add 6,000 Border Patrol agents squares with his 2005 budget cuts that scrapped plans for nearly 10,000 additional agents?

Huh? He was supposed to send some last year, but he scrapped the plans? What gives?

From SFGate.com:

The law signed by President Bush less than two months ago to add thousands of border patrol agents along the U.S.-Mexico border has crashed into the reality of Bush's austere federal budget proposal, officials said Tuesday.

Officially approved by Bush on Dec. 17 after extensive bickering in Congress, the National Intelligence Reform Act included the requirement to add 10,000 border patrol agents in the five years beginning with 2006. Roughly 80 percent of the agents were to patrol the southern U.S. border from Texas to California, along which thousands of people cross into the United States illegally every year.

But Bush's proposed 2006 budget, revealed Monday, funds only 210 new border agents.

The shrunken increase reflects the lack of money for an army of border guards and the capacity to train them, officials said.

Well, that certainly puts the new border plan into perspective.

Tags: [Media Matters], [questions for Tony Snow about the border plan], [TPMmuckraker], [Chertoff mentions back in December that sending the National Guard is a mistake and won't fix the border problem], [government was to send 10,000 troops last year, but ended up funding only 210], [Bush's border plan]